Special drone court needed as check: Gates

WASHINGTON — Former US defense secretary Robert Gates on Sunday endorsed the idea of having a special court review drone strikes as a check against a president's power to, in effect, execute Americans.

The issue came to the fore last week during a Senate hearing to confirm John Brennan, President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism chief, as director of the CIA.

Gates, a former CIA director who served as defense secretary under both Obama and former president George W. Bush, said the rules followed by the Obama administration "are quite stringent and are not being abused."

"But who is to say about a future president?" he said in an interview with CNN's State of the Union.

"I just think some check on the ability of a president to do this has merit as we look to the longer-term future," he said.

7. Those take place under the rules of war, this takes place under no rules what so ever.

8. The "rules of war"

an oxymoron if I ever heard one, obviously need to evolve to consider the existence of drones. Again, I don't see them as fundamentally different from any other act of war where one country invades another for a military purpose.

12. This President

is as committed as the last one to making sure that we take the fight to the terrorists where they are, rather than letting them take it to us in the United States. If he did not, his would be a failed Presidency.